Johann Gottfried Herder as an Educator |
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animals appreciation beautiful become Bückeburg catechism century CHAPTER child Cicero classes classical conception consistory criticism cultivated culture earth enthusiasm expression feeling French French language genius geography German language German literature Goethe grammar greatest Greek Grimm Hamann happiness heart Herder believed Herder saw history of education human humanistic ideal ideas Ideen imitation Immanuel Kant individual influence inspired instruction intellectual interest Johann Gottfried Herder Kant knowledge Königsberg language Latin Latin language Leibnitz letters literary living ment methods of teaching mind modern Mohrungen monads moral mother tongue movement nature organization pedagogical philosophy Pietists poet poetry powers practical pupils realized Realschule reason reform religion religious Riga Romans Rousseau says sense social soul spirit student sympathy taught teacher theology theory things thought tion Trescho true truth universe Weimar gymnasium whole Wilhelm von Humboldt words writings wrote youth
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Page 242 - It was seafarers," he writes in bis diary ," " who brought the Greeks their earliest religion. All Greece was a colony on the sea. Consequently their mythology was not, like that of the Egyptians and Arabs, a religion of the desert, but a religion of the sea and the forest. Orpheus, Homer, Pindar, to be fully understood, ought to be read at sea. With what an absorption one listens to or tells stories on shipboard! How easily a sailor inclines to the fabulous! Himself an adventurer, in quest of strange...
Page 266 - A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase. Every being, which during its natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds, must suffer destruction during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional year, otherwise, on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers -would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support the product.
Page 276 - But, in a certain sense, history also opens to us these delightful bowers of friendship and discourse with the upright and thoughtful of all times. Here Plato stands before me; there I hear Socrates's kindly questionings, and share in his last fate. When Marcus Antoninus in his chamber communes with his heart, he also speaks to mine; and poor Epictetus gives commands more powerful than those of a king. The ill-starred Tullius, the unfortunate...
Page 242 - ... sailor inclines to the fabulous! Himself an adventurer, in quest of strange worlds, how ready is he to imagine wondrous things! Have I not experienced this myself ? With what a sense of wonder I went on board ship! Did I not see everything stranger, larger, more astounding and fearful than it was ? With what curiosity and excitement one approaches the land! How one stares at the pilot with his wooden shoes and his large white hat! How one sees in him the whole French nation down to their king,...
Page 277 - Boethius speak to me, confiding to me the circumstances of their lives, the anguish and the comfort of their souls. Thus history leads us, as it were, into the council of fate, teaches us the eternal laws of human nature, and assigns to us our own place in that great organism in which reason and goodness have to struggle, to be sure, with chaotic forces, but always, according to their very nature, must create order and go forward on the path of victory.
Page 28 - Its spirituality is your own creation, or else is nothing. Awake, arise, be willing, endure, struggle, defy evil, cleave to good, strive, be strenuous, be devoted, throw into the face of evil and depression your brave cry of resistance, and then this dark universe of destiny will glow with a divine light. Then you will commune with the eternal.
Page 282 - ... man by himself: the whole structure of his humanity is connected by a spiritual birth, education, with his parents, teachers, friends; with all the circumstances of his life, and consequently with his countrymen and their forefathers; and lastly with the whole chain of the human species, some link or other of which is continually acting on his mental faculties.
Page 266 - ... each other. Here godlike man is annoyed by snakes, there by vermin, here a shark devours him, there a tiger. Each strives with each, as each is pressed upon; each must provide for his own subsistence, and defend his own life. Why acts Nature thus and why does she thus crowd her creatures one upon another? Because she would produce the greatest number and variety of living beings in the least space, so that one crushes another, and an equilibrium of powers can alone produce peace in the creation.
Page 294 - War, in opposition to peace, does more to arouse national life and to expand national power than any other means known to history. It certainly brings much material and mental distress in its train, but at the same time it evokes the noblest activities of the human nature.
Page 19 - As all that enters the human understanding comes there through the senses, the first reason of man is a sensuous reason; and it is this which serves as a basis for the intellectual reason. Our first teachers of philosophy are our feet, our hands, and our eyes. To substitute books for all these is not to teach us to reason, but to teach us to use the reason of others ; it is to teach us to believe much and never to know anything.